


Achilles

by waywarddreamer



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Nile Freeman centric, Religious Conflict, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Team as Family, aka nile copes, heavy content, mention of her family - Freeform, nile needs therapy too, she misses her family please let her see her family, the girl shot herself in the foot this isn't a stretch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26030563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waywarddreamer/pseuds/waywarddreamer
Summary: Being suddenly gifted with immortality has its drawbacks, Nile soon discovers.
Comments: 19
Kudos: 148





	Achilles

**Author's Note:**

> Second story for the fandom! Thank you guys for all the kind words on the last one. This fic gets into heavy content so be careful when reading okay :) Take care of yourselves.

Nile wakes up in a cottage on the outskirts of a city in some country that she is still too exhausted to recall. It’s hard to keep track of their location with the amount of flights Copley has them taking back to back in such a brief amount of time. Andy is the only other one awake, the sound of soft music filtering from below the closed door of her room—Joe and Nicky probably still draped over each other in theirs.

She heads into the bathroom undisturbed, preparing for the long day that stretches ahead of her.

Nile begins to brush her teeth. So exhausted she doesn’t even realize— until the water cupped in her hands is stained a stark red as she drinks and the taste of iron is unmistakably sharp on her tongue—how hard she is pressing the bristles against her gums. She hurries to spit the remainder of blood out into the sink and stares after her blood as it swirls away, draining away into the sink for a full minute before her mind finally wakes up. Throwing on the first t-shirt she sees, Nile heads back to the living room. Clear from his still mussed bedhead, Nile was right, Joe must have just woken up but even in his half-awake daze, the smile he gives her is no less warm for it as he throws his arm around her as the pair leaves their hideout to find something to eat.

The real pain comes later when her arm breaks and then sets itself back in place seconds later in the middle of a fight. Nile bites down the scream—something she’s quickly getting used to these days, though not as quickly as she might like— before she switches the hand her gun is in, and fires it at her assailant.

By the end of the mission, they are successful in stopping the cargo. She sees how quick the others bounce back from their injuries, not even wincing as their body forces things back together in places to heal. Nile struggles to prevent her hand from rubbing over her skin, still looking for traces of where it split open. She’s silent the entire way back.

Nile’s in the kitchen chopping vegetables for some ancient recipe that Andy is dying to make, the knife slips and she almost cuts herself— not that it matters, not when she can heal. Nile could chop all her fingers off and they would just grow back, without a single indication that they were missing in the first place.

Nile takes in a sharp breath at the thought—she glances over at the rest of the team. Andy is arguing about some old language with Nicky while Joe is laughing on the couch with the TV playing loudly in the next room.

Relief washes over her— they aren’t paying any attention. Nile immediately thinks about anything else and doesn’t protest when Andy asks her to stir the soup— far away from sharp edges. It’s easy to forget when Nicky makes her smile at a joke that she finally understands, and together they chatter about any and everything.

Then, exhaustion hits her suddenly after dinner. Nile says goodnight and she is alone once again.

Nile is not sure whether being left alone is a good or a bad thing. Tonight of all nights, she is restless— thinks about the amount of times she should have died today, the amount of scars that should litter her body, the amount of bandages that should be wrapped around her fragile skin.

  
Somewhere in her mom’s heart, she stopped bleeding, she had no more second chances. It’s over, as soon as the flag came into her mother’s hands.

Nothing is finite about any of this. Her blood will keep flowing like the hands of time—constant and foreboding. Nile leans over, her hand grabbings onto her thighs for leverage.  
Her nails dig half-moons into her skin without realizing it, the wound closes, and closes again. Nile will never see her family again. Her heart aches and she falls asleep with tears threatening to form in the corner of her eyes.

In the morning, she sits candidly with the light beaming off of her, counting every single breath that leaves her body. It takes her longer to get out of bed than usual.

Joe’s eyes fill with concern upon seeing how fatigued she is. Nile shakes her head and changes the topic before he can say anything.

Why speak when she’s just a baby? Not even that in their eyes. She hasn’t gone through what they have, she doesn’t get to suffer like this. She will get over it, she always does.

Nile gets used to the feeling of bullets leaving her gut, of limbs growing back, but it is not right. None of this is right. She didn’t even have a choice in the matter, and she feels an aching isolation deep inside her soul.

Nile clutches her cross every night, whispering prayers for the souls she's taken—if religion is the opiate of the masses, Nile is in the midst of withdrawal. The amount of times she has escaped death with her newfound condition and she feels like a cheater. That this will all come back to bite her one day. Others would be grateful for this gift but all she feels is a resounding sense of dread.

The prayers never comfort her the same like it did when she was mortal. The cross hangs hollow around her neck.

Nile does not gravitate towards alcohol or drugs when she feels lost, never did. Her mother made sure of it, told her to keep her chin up and keep strutting forward in a world that constantly tells them otherwise- but she can understand why Booker does. When she visits him, she looks at the forever draining bottle that he always has by his side. God, she understands.  
This isn’t a pain that Nile is used to. This is a slow suffocation. There are moments when she is with the others she can breathe and pretend there isn’t something itching to snake its way around her neck, eating her from the inside out, tormenting her every waking second.

She tries to shake the feelings off, and like the serpent did to Eve those thoughts come back hissing in her ears. She should stand tall through it all just like her mother did, but she’s not as strong as her. Never will be.

Nile wonders if her mom thinks she’ll meet her at heavens gate. That she’s waiting on her, swinging on her daddy’s arm. Her mother's body would tremble when her father shakes his head no, tells her mother that she isn’t here.

Her mother would be devastated that her baby didn't come home, didn’t come see her.

How long would they wait for her?

All her dreams consist of is drowning, faces switching between Qunyh’s and her mother’s.

Nile awakens, breathing harshly, and she’s on the edge of a panic attack already. She walks over the others carefully in their little hideout, her mind buzzing, her feet needing to move. It’s late and if she was mortal she would have been afraid, but she’s stopped caring for such frivolous things.

Nile’s halfway across the city before she becomes aware of her surroundings. Her fists beat against a brick wall in some shoddy alleyway until she could see the muscles lying underneath, the blood staining and faded into the red and what does it matter.

It’ll all heal back up in seconds anyway.

She does not remember when she starts taking off her necklace, until Andy comments on it. Joe or Nicky she would expect, but not for someone who used to be a god to notice such a thing. When Andy asks, it's not with snark but out of genuine curiosity.

Nile shrugs, before taking another sip of her coffee. There’s no need to answer, Andy will send the boys to talk to her anyway

They tell her about faith, spend hours talking about their own journey and they don’t realize that it’s not about believing.

It's about the fact that she still does, and that makes it much much harder.

One night she ends up on some roof that she blindly climbed, staring down at the ground below. Nothing for her is permanent anymore, she could step forward, crossing the edge and live. Nile thinks about having to reset her bones, having to feel the life force it’s way back into her corpse.

She looks up at the stars instead.

It’ll be a long time before she’s amongst them.

Qunyh’s dreams are easy to share, but not her own, they are not hers even as painful and vivid as they are.

In Nile’s dreams, her father is there and he reaches out to her, and as fast as Nile runs she cannot catch him, finds herself unable to grab his hand and tell him about all he’s missed. She sprints until she falters to the ground and feels her chin crunch underneath her. Nile gets back up and it still isn’t enough. Even when she pulls her muscles until they burst, he is always miles away from her.

Those hard nights turn into days she is more human than god. Gods don’t feel, gods know everything, gods don’t feel this crippling self doubt. She’s only human when it applies. This must be how Andy survived all those years alone.

So Nile starts acting like a god, takes the lead and guides in most situations. She’s not reckless, just less apprehensive. It’s easy to go in when wounds can close and organs stitch themselves back together, when there’s something worth fighting for and even when it isn’t.  
So it doesn’t matter if sometimes she slips up, and takes more bullets than she needs too. The blood will keep flowing anyway.

Her chest hurts more often than not these days, always tightening now, like it’s begging to leap from her ribcage. It feels like a wildfire constantly burning away at her, eating through her insides but she just waits it out, feels her heart die and start up again.

It’s one long, ongoing mission they had been working on for months, busting down a high-profile trafficking ring, when Nile feels her heart seem to give out, but she staggers against the wall, waits for her heart to heal and she goes into the fray again and again.

Nile blackouts mid-fight to the point she cannot remember a majority of it until the violence stops and she can finally stand still. They all meet back up, the others congratulating each other through playful ruffles and dead languages before turning to Nile, and their eyes fill with concern. There is sweat dripping down her forehead, and everything is ringing. Andy is reaching out to her, and she cannot stop fucking shaking.

“Nile, breathe.” Joe is saying, and that’s all she can do, until she can’t. Nile offers a shaky smile, she’ll be fine, it’ll all heal and then darkness. Her body crumples to the hard concrete and she can hear something crack from the impact.

Calloused hands pick her up with urgency— it’s Andy, yelling something at the other two, she’s holding her so gently, that Nile wants to cry.

Someone is moving her hair out of her face to rest something cool on her forehead and then Nile finally submits to unconsciousness.

Her vision is blurry upon waking up but she realizes she is on a warm bed, surrounded by pillows. Nile takes a couple of slow breaths. Her heart no longer aches but she isn’t confident in how long that’s going to last. She stands up, rubbing her face in her hands, Nile’s exhausted—and it runs deeper than the lack of sleep.

“Hey kid.”

Nile pauses, lifting her head up at that familiar voice. Upon seeing Booker, she immediately begins to cry.

Booker reminds her so much of her baby brother, the way he stands uncertain, unprotected himself and yet his concern is still for her.

She sobs like she’s remembering the last hug her father gave her. Booker’s arms envelop her, and she buries herself in them.

They all knew.

Of course they did.

Nile feels like those kings who thought they were made of glass—who were afraid to be touched, afraid to break so much that they sheltered themselves until they succumbed to their madness. And she is breaking, even if she wants to deny it. Booker shields her from the world in his embrace, his chin resting over her braids, he slowly rocks her.

Footsteps approach and Booker’s body locks in anticipation.

Nothing would move him, not even if the others threatened them. His chin moves off her, and he stares back, and in her mind she can see his hardened gaze on the others, daring them to move closer.  
They make no further move, and he slowly returns his chin back to the top of her head.

He is in no rush, and gives Nile all the time that she needs.

“How did you-” she starts, but the emotion clogs her throat, preventing her from speaking. She’s not a child again, she needs to act her age, but Booker holds onto her even tighter as if he can read her thoughts.

“Just like you look out for me, I look out for you, Nile.” Booker says, with such a firmness that she doesn’t doubt him for a second. His eyes shine with understanding, with a clarity, even though he smells like cheap whiskey.

The others are hovering outside of the door, waiting. He gently wipes the tears off her face, grabbing onto her hand, and he gestures towards the living room, asking for permission.

Nile is afraid of many things—the ending of her old life and the beginning of this one, but she does not have to wade through it alone. Anxiety swells the closer they get to the door. Her nails dig harshly into his skin. Booker pauses—not even flinching, asking her again with just a look.  
She thinks about her mother, of how much she loved her—still loves her and with that thought Nile steps forward.

Nile thinks she can hear her father’s voice, as clear as the last time she saw him.

His eyes set with a determination that Nile hadn’t inherited yet, telling her that everything will be okay.


End file.
